Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E. by Warren Ellis, Stuart Immonen, et al.

Collection published: 2020
Contents originally published: 2006
Read: January 2024

Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E.: This Is What They Want
Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E.: I Kick Your Face

Writer: Warren Ellis

Penciler: Stuart Immonen

Inker: Wade Von Grawbadger

Colorist: Dave McCaig

Letterers: Chris Eliopoulos & Joe Caramagna

After her original appearance (see item #2 in the list below), Elsa Bloodstone was reinvented in the pages of Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E., a farcical maxiseries about a team of D-list characters who find out that the anti-terrorism organization they work for, the Beyond Corporation, is actually run by terrorists and testing its WMDs on Americans. You might think this would be a very dramatic thing, but it actually happens before issue #1. This is because Nextwave is not about stuff like characters or themes, it's about leaning into two things: 1) violence is a fundamental tenet of superhero comics, and 2) superhero comics are full of dumb shit.

The main characters are largely has-beens or forgotten: Elsa, of course; but also Jack Kirby's Machine Man, from his weird 2001: A Space Odyssey tie-in; Tabitha Smith, an X-Man named "Boom-Boom" with the powers to explode things; and Monica Rambeau, recently on the big screen but then kind of irrelevant and without a home, as a former Captain Marvel, then Photon, then Pulsar. Add to all these the original character "the Captain," who answers the question, "what if the worst person alive got the power of Captain America... and also he never figured out the answer to 'Captain What?'"

 

Perhaps the truest ever depiction of Elana Gomel's "violent sublime."
from Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E. #6

Ellis delights in making them all pretty awful. Tabitha is basically Paris Hilton with superpowers (very topical in 2006), Machine Man is always drunk and ranting about "fleshy ones," Monica rattles on about when she was in the Avengers but now doesn't give a shit, Elsa just likes to kill monsters. Each two-issue story sees them turn up somewhere and then dismantle a Beyond Corporation plan in as violent and gratuitous and stupid a way as possible.

 

In the first volume, Elsa seems like she could be the same character we knew from Bloodstone, just older, but in the series's second volume we are told she was raised by her father (not her mother, as established in her debut), who dropped her into monster pits as a baby in order to develop her skills. It passes my law of retcons: though different, I find it just as interesting as her old origin.

 

A very different mother for Elsa.
from Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E. #8

 

The book as a whole is good fun... one sort of feels like it's simultaneously (almost) Stuart Immonen's best work and like he was wasted a bit. Like, there's not a bad panel, scene, character, or composition here... but oughtn't he be illustrating things like Secret Identity or Moving Pictures? Though if they had got some hack to do this, it wouldn't have worked. At first I thought the whole thing was a bit of an Authority parody... then I remembered who wrote The Authority! But when I got to the end, I realized I was right. What kind of writer satirizes themself just six years later? Don't answer that, but it's funny anyway.

 

Collection published: 2019
Contents originally published: 2006-07
Read: January 2024

So is it great? I don't know. Is it worth your time? I don't know. But if Marvel reprinted the complete run at an affordable price again (I read it via Hoopla this time), I probably would pick it up. Healing America by beating people up!

This is the third post in a series about Elsa Bloodstone. The next installment covers Marvel Zombies: Battleworld. Previous installments are listed below:

1. Bloodstone & the Legion of Monsters (1975-2012)
2. Bloodstone (2001-06)